Strange Desires
by Groxbros
Summary: A bizarre object has appeared above the planet's moon! Civilization has advanced past the ice and fire wars and now faces a threat on a scale it has never seen before. Smart and anonymous beings are interested in Chima's most well-known resource—chi, something that does not come naturally anywhere else in the cosmos. Where do they come from, and do they want more from the planet?


Mount Cavora was the pinnacle of Chiman civilization, its glory transcending the tall skyline of offices and residential towers around it. Surrounding the mountain was a huge field of maintenance planes suspended in the air to collect chi and transport it to the city hall below; the city hall was complex in its structure, and it was run exclusively by lion and eagle leaders. The metropolis was enormous too, about five-hundred miles of advanced and urbanized living covering a vast circle extending away in all directions. Skyscrapers would never disappear—they'd just fade out into the foggy horizon and keep going on as far as one could gaze.

The planet and all of its continents were littered with Chima's influence, even the north and south poles. Our species had spread to every last corner of the world over the past 1900 years, a revolution in technology and scientific knowledge that began not too long after the fabled ice and fire wars. I was living in the capital of all of this: the Metropolitian area as I mentioned before. Here chi and resources were relentlessly being collected and distributed around the globe—whether it be flown by planes or shipped by boats from trade ports. Each continent had its own set of local leaders from any species, be it saber tooth, wolf, crocodile—absolutely any one.

Within these continents were dozens of smaller sub-cities that relied on a supply of chi from the metropolis. This system was rather unstable, but it still was good enough to keep civilization intact. Amazingly Mount Cavora could produce enough chi to sustain a global race of Chimans as large it was, with hundreds of millions of animals relying on it every day. Our space programs flourished, too.

Starting about 80 years before, our space agency was looking to start setting up colonies above Chima's atmosphere. Now this was obviously far-fetched since that level of technology didn't exist yet, but they were able to land the first animals on the Moon about decade later. Four people touched the lunar surface that day—a crocodile, two lions, and a rhino. A global network of satellites was established in orbit around the planet, many individual satellites for the purpose of creating a GP system and a planetary surverying system.

Our civilization did not have any organized religion(s) at all. No one cared to believe in any thing—to say the least; society only wanted to keep advancing. Without the hinder of religion, I guess our race just flourished very, very quickly. Now I could keep talking about how far our civilization had gone over the past two millenia, but I don't know absolutely everything. Instead I need to tell you my full story, starting from the first day...

My dwelling was in a blue apartment tower about five miles out from the city hall; I was coming home from a long day of work at my office. The streets were extremely crowded with cars and people moving back and forth, city life was extremely modern at that time; buisnesses, food stands, avenues, stoplights, and just about everything you'd see in a massively populated city like mine. My room was eleven floors up, I chose to walk up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. Once I was up I nearly bumped into a raven carrying a basket of wet clothes. We exchanged brief apologies and went our ways.

Tossing my briefcase to the floor, I turned on the television and cycled through channels until I was at the news. They were talking about a 'bizzare and unidentified object in lunar synchronous orbit.' Or I can just say it was a 'BAUOILSO.' There was a middle-aged lion in a black tuxedo having a conversation with an eagle executive on live air about this. Meanwhile to the bottom of the screen, there was actual real-time footage of the object just floating there in space; it looked like it was some alien spaceship—completely strange.

If you looked close enough, you would see apparent blue jets of plasma coming out from below the ship-like object. The object itself was shaped like a massive jellyfish with a metal shield encasing it; surrounding the entire thing was a ring of orbiting asteroids and space debris. Nobody would doubt it at this point—there was an intelligence inside of that mysterious entity. The voices of the two conversers on the screen alerted me back into focus.

The lion on the channel had very baggy eyes, a dark brown mane and a very heavy beard, and I already recognized him. His name was Launce, professor of astronomy and philosophy from Chandran University.

"We thought it would be much better to release this footage out into the public, before some amateur with a cellphone tried to edit it with cheap software and make it seem like something entirely different."

The eagle on the left side of the television was someone I did not know. She appeared to be a lot younger and said she was working towards a degree in political science and anthropology.

"I agree with you, Launce. But what exactly is this thing? Why is it near the Moon, and are the beings inside of it, if any, actually intelligent?"

The professor stacked a thick sheet of papers on his table and cleared his throat. "We very, very, very strongly believe that this is an alien-made object. Why it has established itself into that kind of orbit, none of us know. Now there will pretty inevitably be actual conscious lifeforms in the ship—maybe not even really life but instead machines. The fact that they were able to bring themselves all the way to Chima, however as far as they could have traveled, automatically shows that they're far more evolved and advanced than our civilization," The man started to show signs of angst and nervousness in his voice. "Right now, all we can do is wait and hope to see what this thing does. Trying to attack it immediately would be downright foolish considering that there too appears to be a field of asteroids surrounding the ship. Whatever it does, we can only hope that it won't be hostile towards our planet and our civilization."

My phone rang as the discussion continued.; it was a friend of mine, a wolf doctor.

"Lafer, are you seeing this stuff? It's a total alien invasion! Everyone at my place is freaking out!"

I told him to call me back later, and hung up. The situation was stressing me out—which I didn't need after I already had a rather intense day at work. I flipped the channel to sports and fell back on my bed to take a nap.


End file.
